Reality Bites
An upcoming Congressional report suggests that NASA satellites have been hacked four times in recent years, possibly by people involved with the Chinese military. NASA isn’t confirming all of that – but they do admit “suspicious events” have occurred. More »
Conservative Senator Nicole Eaton touched off a cross-country debate when she suggested it’s time to retire the beaver as our national symbol.
If the sight of Boston Dynamics’ unstoppable Alpha Dog didn’t convince you of the coming robot apocalypse, then perhaps a glimpse of its bipedal relative, PETMAN, will. Last time we saw the two-legged bot, It was walking well enough, but it lacked the humanoid visage needed to infiltrate and overthrow. In the time since, however, PETMAN has gotten a more anatomically-correct body and some arms — giving it some push-up prowess to go with its jaunty gait. As the video below demonstrates, this robot isn’t a T1000 just yet, but is seems certain PETMAN and its progeny will be running and leaping over us meatbags on the way to the top of the evolutionary food chain soon enough. So our anthropomorphic replacements are on the way, but there’s no need for full-blown panic… yet.
Continue reading Boston Dynamics PETMAN portends the pending robot apocalypse
Boston Dynamics PETMAN portends the pending robot apocalypse originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
There’s nothing worse (seriously, it’s scientifically proven) than catching some serious glare on your smartphone, unless you’re checking for spinach in your teeth — but thanks to Nippon Electric Glass’ new “invisible glass,” an overly reflective surface may be a problem of the past. According to our friends at Tech-On, the company has developed a new type of vitrine that reduces glare by using a special film on each side of the substrate, which allows more light to pass through the layers rather than bounce off the surface. Normal glass reflects around eight percent of light, while the new variety only rebounds 0.5 percent, dramatically reducing the luminous reflectance to around 0.1 percent or lower. Looks like your yearning to purchase this thing is finally justified.
Filed under: Displays
‘Invisible glass’ could reduce display glare, fails as food-in-teeth mirror originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The Transformer Prime, with its quad-core silicon and tasty OS, has rightfully garnered much attention lately. A PowerPoint deck detailing ASUS’ Q3 earnings now gives us a peek at its Eee Pad strategy — confirming the aforementioned Prime’s November 9th release date, while also promising two more bot-powered slates in the first quarter of 2012. Of course, ASUS isn’t putting all of its eggs in the Android basket, as the same slide reveals that the Taiwanese firm will be getting its first two Windows 8 tablets to market by this time next year. So it seems that there will be an Eee Pad for all, whether you’re from Redmond or Mountain View. No need to shove, fellas, there’s room at ASUS’ tablet table for everybody.
ASUS’ Eee Pad plans: Transformer Prime landing November 9th, two Win 8 tablets coming in 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Netbook News German (Translated) | 
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The NDP says it will twin Highway 10 between Balgonie and Yorkton if it wins the provincial election.
Looking to make a rebound in the ailing TV business, Sony has announced that it will split its television division into three. According to Reuters, the company is looking to keep operations in check with separate departments for LCD TVs, outsourcing and next-gen TVs. The company is wasting no time, as the move will take place on November 1st. The announcement also comes in advance of Sony’s quarterly earnings report this Wednesday which is predicted to be a quite a few eggs short of the full basket that was hoped for — due in part to its inability to compete against Vizio and Samsung. There are also rumblings that the company could be looking to sell off its almost 50-percent share of a liquid-crystal display collaboration with the aforementioned Sammy. It appears moves are being made to stay in the TV game, but the real question is will Sony be able to stop the bleeding (or, perhaps more appropriately, melting)?
Sony to divide TV division into three-headed monster, looks to bounce back originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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There is truth in this comic. “Back in the day Halloween was about Ghosts, Zombies and things that are dead!” – taking aim at both the HP TouchPad and the BlackBerry PlayBook. Future production of the TouchPad was cancelled a few months ago, but the PlayBook is not dead, RIM has said they are committed to bringing out more versions and is currently offering a 2-for-1 promo. So sad that it’s come to this.
Source: Joy Of Tech
Via: CrackBerry
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China has already, however briefly, sat atop the Top500 list of supercomputers, but that was using silicon designed by American companies like Intel and NVIDIA. The country’s latest contestant though, is sure to be a much bigger point of national pride. The Sunway BlueLight MPP, which was installed at the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan this September, is powered by 8,700 ShenWei SW1600 CPUs — the homegrown chips that come out of Shanghai. The Sunway’s one petaflop performance isn’t enough to make it the new king of the hill, but it should get it into the top 20. More impressively, the machine only consumes about one megawatt of electricity — roughly a quarter of the 2.5 petaflop Tianhe-1A. Now it’s up to researchers to crank these ShenWei cores up to a 11 and make a run at that 50 petaflop Cray.
China debuts homegrown supercomputer, hits one petaflop mark originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | New York Times, The Hindu | Email this | Comments
We’ve already seen Ubuntu running on tablets and smartphones, but not in any official capacity. Rumors had it that Canonical would be making a serious push into the tablet space in early 2011, but that effort never materialized, or at least was never acknowledged. Still, Unity has some finger-friendly streaks and Oneiric added ARM support — so it’s not much of a stretch to see the popular Linux distro on your mobile devices. Well, at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth made that move official by issuing a challenge to the Ubuntu community to start pushing beyond the traditional PC form factor. Few details were given, but Shuttleworth did say that he believes the time is right for the OS to start making moves into the tablet, phone, in-dash infotainment and smart TV spaces. There were no products to announce, but Shuttleworth was confident the OS would be ready and in shipping consumer electronics by the time version 14.04 arrived in April of 2014. Though, we’re sure some prototypes will start showing up sooner rather than later.
Ubuntu coming to tablets, phones, cars and smart TVs by 2014 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Well, we already knew the original Transformer would be getting an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade sometime in the near future, and now ASUS Germany has confirmed that the quad-cored Prime and the Eee Pad Slider will also get a taste of Android’s latest OS. No semblance of a datum for release just yet, but the triumvirate of Transformers will join the upgrade queue behind ASUS’ other Android offering, the Padfone.
ASUS says Transformer Prime will arrive on Honeycomb, ICS coming later originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink Tabletblog.de (Translated) | ASUS Germany (Facebook) | Email this | Comments
We told you about Google’s new social news reader, code-named Propeller, about a month ago, and it looks like a launch could take place this week. Propeller will be a lot like Flipboard, which has been a big hit on the Apple iPad. It will also compete with the likes of Pulse, Taptu, and News360. Furthermore, we are hearing Yahoo! will also launch a similar offering this Wednesday called Livestand.
We aren’t sure if Propeller will be the actual name since it’s a code name, but there are reports that “Currents” could be the choice. It’s an HTML5 reader, and it will be available for both Android and the Apple iPad. Propeller will have plenty of media partners, and it will integrate with the Google+ social network.
Google’s answer to Flipboard could launch this week
It ain’t the first automaker to do so, but Ford’s taking a step in the ‘stay in your own lane!’ direction with a new technology package for the Explorer. The Driver Alert System is slated to launch in early 2012, and it’ll tout new lane keeping technologies, including a system that can help detect drowsy drivers. The goal here is to keep sleepyheads from destroying lives — be it their own or others — by suggesting that they pull over, rest and have a sip of coffee if they’ve been cruising along for an extended period of time. Furthermore, a camera setup will monitor one’s lane position, and if they drift too far away from the straight and narrow, their steering wheel will vibrate. It all sounds good and well, but the fact that a AAA survey found that over 40 percent of Americans have “fallen asleep or nodded off while driving” makes ‘staying at home’ seem like the sensible choice.
Continue reading Ford’s Driver Alert System keeps you in the right lane, recommends java on occasion
Ford’s Driver Alert System keeps you in the right lane, recommends java on occasion originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Oct 2011 20:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
The St. Louis Cardinals won a remarkable World Series they weren’t even supposed to reach, beating the Texas Rangers 6-2 in Game 7 on Friday night with another key hit by hometown star David Freese and six gutty innings from Chris Carpenter.
From the outside, the iPhone 4S looks exactly like its predecessor, but the guts of the device are an entirely different story. A faster processor and baseband, along with an improved camera and slightly larger battery should make for significantly improved performance. But some customers are noting that their new phones, pre-loaded with iOS5, are experiencing poor battery life — some up to 10% drain per hour.
According to The Guardian newspaper, several iPhone 4S customers have been contacted directly by Apple engineers who are looking into the issue. They have been asked to voluntarily install monitoring software — all anonymously collected, of course — in order to determine what could be the cause of the aberrant battery drain. Some have speculated that Siri, the new always-on personal assistant, needs a constant connection to the internet, slowly trickling the battery dry. Others say it could be background processes at play, which have more free reign to update over previous versions of iOS. There have also been reports of corrupted iCloud or Google sync data — specifically corrupted contact lists — which, once wiped clean and re-installed, solve the problem.
While there doesn’t seem to be anything official yet from the company, it’s good to know that Apple is looking into the issue. Have you experienced a decline in battery life over your iPhone 4? If so, let us know in the comments.
Source: The Guardian
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Samsung Italy has confirmed that a number of devices will be receiving the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update. And though we figured these would make the list, it’s nice to have it writing.
Devices:
We’re digging deep on whether or not the original Galaxy S device will be receiving the update as its specs are sort of yesterday’s specs. However, if they do, you’ll be the first to know.
Samsung Italy Outs Several Devices To Receive Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
From rumors to reality: YouTube is taking a crack at original programing. Sources close to the Wall Street Journal say that the streaming outfit is partnering with a broad mix of media firms, production companies, and savvy content creators to launch 100 channels, generating over 25 hours of original content each day. Most of these channels aren’t slated to launch until next year, but when they do they are said to be backed by names like Ashton Kutcher, Tony Hawk, Jay-Z, and Madonna. YouTube is reportedly paying content partners over $100 million to jump-start this project, and hopes to create quality that can be sold to Advertisers. YouTube’s blog confirmed that the first of these premium channels is set to launch next month, with subsequent channels coming in waves over the next year. Hit the source link below so see YouTube’s official announcement and an early list of channels and content providers. We know you’ll join us in giddy anticipation of Shaquille O’Neal’s Comedy Shaq Network .
Google gets ready to play traditional TV, preps original YouTube channels originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | YouTube, Wall Street Journal | Email this | Comments
Looks like the tablet that wouldn’t die is finally dead — well, kind of sort, for now. HP sent out a note to let the world know that it’s “officially out of stock” of the zombie TouchPad. It’s not all bad news, however — apparently you can still pick one up at Best Buy, so long as you buy an HP computer at the same time. Mourn another quasi-death for the webOS slate with Boyz II Men after the break.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Continue reading HP ‘officially’ out of TouchPads, Best Buy can still help you out
HP ‘officially’ out of TouchPads, Best Buy can still help you out originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Oct 2011 20:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Results from independent cross-checks of last month's FTL neutrino findings wont start rolling in for at least a few more months. In the meantime, however, physicists at the OPERA lab who made the initial observations will be running their experiment yet again — only this time they'll be measuring things a little differently. More »
It has been a long year for Google TV. The first (and only, so far) round of hardware started shipping in October 2010 and at the time, promised the Android Marketplace with its wealth of third party apps early in the next year. That clearly didn’t happen, and it quickly became most notable for what it was being blocked from doing, like streaming video from TV providers like Hulu and various network TV websites. After various false starts and delays, Sony Google TV and Logitech Revue hardware will finally receive updates to Android 3.1 Honeycomb (congratulations Google, now where's Ice Cream Sandwich?) starting this weekend with Sony up first and Logitech "shortly thereafter." The biggest additions are the aforementioned apps, a new interface, and a refocused system for content discovery that starts with the new TV & Movies app pictured above. Check out the gallery for more pictures of the new Google TV, while more details and videos follow after the break.
Continue reading Google TV, take two, arrives next week with Honeycomb, Android Market
Google TV, take two, arrives next week with Honeycomb, Android Market originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Google TV Blog, Google TV site | Email this | Comments
